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Calculator Havoc -- Caltech Humor Essay



silverdra 5 / 12  
Oct 22, 2010   #1
Hi guys, I just fininshed an essay on this prompt:

Caltech students have long been known for their quirky sense of humor and creative pranks and for finding unusual ways to have fun. What is something that you find fun or humorous? (Limit 1000 characters)

The biology teacher calls out my friends name during a partner lab: he needs to go to the attendance office to clear up an absence. He forgot to take his backpack with him - a perfect opportunity for me to strike. I reach into his backpack stealthily, and, making sure that I am not being watched, pull out his TI-83 calculator and decide to cause havoc. I enter a simple but elegant program on my friend's calculator and return it to its original place. So far so good. My friend comes back, notices nothing out of the ordinary, sits down, and resumes his math homework since we are already done with the lab. Only after using the calculator for a few minutes has he realized that it has been tampered with: the numbers are all greater than they should be. Not knowing the exact cause, he frantically presses all the buttons, finally hitting the "on" key, terminating the program. Giving away my involvement in this heinous crime by letting out an involuntary chuckle, I proceed to show him the program that I wrote, assure him that no harm had been done, and we all had a good laugh in the end.

What do you guys think about it? Does the essay answer the prompt and most importantly, do you think it's interesting? Also, my essay has 1100 characters. Any ideas on how reduce the length? Thanks in advance for your help.

gongnatalie 3 / 8  
Oct 22, 2010   #2
I think your essay answers the prompt very nicely. You might want to watch out for some sentence fragments and wordiness; try for some more elegant word choices. I think that editing will help your character count as well.
EF_Kevin 8 / 13053  
Oct 27, 2010   #3
Oh, an essay about theft and sabotage, very nice... :-)

Use an apostrophe:
friend's

You wrote it in the present tense, so keep this in the present tense:
Only after using the calculator for a few minutes has does he realize that it has been tampered with: the numbers are all greater than they should be.

...and we all both had a good laugh in the end.

This is great! Very funny. If I was smarter, I would play pranks like that, but I don't know anything about programming so I have to use old fashioned pranks, such as plastic film under the toilet seat.


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